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TECHNICAL HIGHLIGHTS

MEDIA PRODUCTION OVER 5G NPN

By Ian Wagdin (BBC), Paola Sunna (EBU), Richard Bradbury (BBC),

Thorsten Lohmar (Ericsson, Rapporteur FS_NPN4AVProd)

The creative industries have made use of wireless technologies The wireless devices and other production networks often have to
for several decades with an increasing reliance over time on radio be interfaced at the receive point rather than at the device itself,
microphones and wireless cameras across all sectors, with sport meaning that we can’t always achieve a complete integration with
and event production in particular making use of them to get close our wired solutions, which adds complexity and latency.
to the action.
In the wired domain we are increasingly seeing the move to
These devices have evolved over many years in order to support Internet Protocol (IP) and commodity IT-based solutions for radio
complex workflows used in Programme Making and Special Events and television production studios that offer more flexibility with
(PMSE) with it becoming increasingly difficult to manage the radio a single connection. IP-based solutions are capable of carrying a
frequency bands in which they operate and to assign enough diverse range of bidirectional signals that don’t need a dedicated
suitable spectrum to support the most demanding production connection for every signal type. IP-based networks also allow
requirements. us to adopt software-based engineering solutions, and this is
increasingly moving to ‘on-demand’ cloud-based architectures so
While existing digital wireless production equipment serves a that we can use technology when we need it and stand it down
lot of PMSE needs, it does have its limitations. Links tend to be when we don’t.
unidirectional and production technicians often have to manage
many different radio systems to carry audio, video and other data Our wireless cameras today use COFDM-based radio modulation
across multiple frequency ranges. The use of reverse audio, video technology, which has been developed from that used to
and control requires dedicated connectivity and infrastructure. broadcast digital TV, with our radio microphones sharing the
gaps (“white spaces”) in the UHF spectrum between broadcast
A professional camera can be battery powered, with some
functions remotely controlled, requiring instantaneous feedback, television transmissions. This allocation of spectrum is under
and demanding huge uplink bit rates. The prime consumers review as we move away from traditional broadcast distribution
of power are the media capturing and handling functions. An models to IP-based delivery. It is therefore only a matter of time
illustration of the different application data flows for a typical before there isn’t enough spectrum for conventional digital
camera unit is depicted below. wireless production and its technologies, further driving the
industry towards IP based workflows.

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